No matter where we come from or where we live, working people in California – janitors, nurses, gig-drivers, caregivers, and more – take pride in doing an honest day’s work and caring for our families. We pay our taxes and keep our state running. Our hard work, talent, and skill built the 4th largest economy in the world, but not enough of the benefits from that work come to us, the workers, and H.R. 1 is only going to make that worse.
 
The devastating impact of the federal H.R. 1’s wealth transfer of $900 billion to corporations has already started to be felt here in California and it will only get worse. The extent of the suffering will depend on the response by legislators.
 
Because of the federal H.R. 1, millions of Californians have already started to lose federally funded food assistance* and millions more will lose their health care starting January 1, 2027. These federal cuts will not spare families with children, veterans or foster youth. A bulk of those who will lose benefits are working people, among the 3.6 million workers who, because of low-road employers who push $36 billion dollars in health care costs onto taxpayers, depend on Medi-Cal to stay on the job and keep their families healthy.

*The LAO estimates that 665,000 CalFresh recipients may lose food assistance benefits due to work requirements, and an additional 72,000 certain noncitizen CalFresh recipients are losing their eligibility for benefits. This equates to over 13.4% of CalFresh recipients statewide potentially having their CalFresh aid terminated due to H.R. 1. The estimated number of impacted individuals per district is imprecise due to lack of available data, so some districts may have more or less than 13.4% of CalFresh participants impacted.